If you listen to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the Club World Cup is already the most popular and successful club tournament in the world. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The man whose name adorns the Club World Cup trophy twice is selling his vision to anyone who will listen, and it seems that even the most powerful man in the world is convinced.
US President Donald Trump presented the trophy to winners Chelsea and even stuck around for the trophy lift, which saw Chelsea get the trophy and around $114 million in prize money thanks to some creative accounting from FIFA. The PR from soccer’s global governing body was simple – everyone wanted to be involved with this tournament, thereby easily explaining such a lavish prize fund. If you pull back Infantino’s veil, however, the commercial reality is very different.
Go deeper with GlobalData
The teams themselves will likely not be complaining too much about taking part. Even lowly Auckland City, a team made up of semi-professionals, some of whom had to take annual leave to take part, will be taking home somewhere in the region of $4.6 million, which could alter the fortunes of the Oceania Football Confederation in a significant way. The likes of Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City and Fluminense will be taking home somewhere between $50-60 million depending on their performance, with a pot of $450 million distributed just for turning up, and an additional $550 million distributed based on performance.
While the players were having to do the hard work in stifling temperatures across the United States, playing games during the hottest parts of the day to satisfy the major European markets to ensure decent viewership numbers, the clubs have benefited financially, while the FIFA president was in no doubt about the success of the tournament.
“If you want the headline from the beginning…the golden era of global club football has started,” Infantino stated in the pre-final press conference that took place in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York.
Echoing President Trump’s gift for oratory, Infantino stated that: “We can say definitely that this FIFA Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge success. After the final tomorrow, we will have (had) two or three billion viewers all over the world, watching the top, top, top-quality football featuring the best players in the best teams in the world.”
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataOne might quibble about that statement, with the champions of Spain, England, and Italy all not present, and the final seeing the current UEFA Conference League winners lifting the trophy, but details like this can be fixed in time. Infantino has already stated that he is keen to see the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Napoli, and Barcelona all in the tournament in future.
Given the shadowy qualification methodology which saw Inter Miami gain entry presumably so that Lionel Messi would take part in the tournament, it is not beyond FIFA’s president to make this happen.
According to Infantino, the tournament generated $2.1 billion in revenue across media rights, sponsorship, ticketing, and other income.
“For 63 matches, the basic average is $33 million per match. There is no other club competition in the world today that comes anywhere close. It is already the most successful club competition on all different measures,” Infantino told reporters.
Taking this at face value, Infantino has created a tournament which has the potential to significantly reshape soccer’s global financial structure, providing tangible growth opportunities for soccer and shifting it away from the European hegemony, and developing a more level global playing field.
However, the prize money on offer was only able to be provided thanks to a last-minute deal with DAZN, the sports streaming service now part-owned by SURJ Sports, the PIF-backed agency that bought the global rights for $1 billion after no other established broadcaster took the rights.
Given that there was no interest from the usual players in the sports rights space, or at least none for the price that Infantino was selling for, it suggests that the reaction to this tournament was, at best, lukewarm from a sports industry that will usually embrace any idea if there is the promise of significant viewership.
Additionally, there was little initial appetite from sponsors, with many perhaps getting involved to maintain relations with FIFA ahead of next year’s World Cup, best highlighted by the fact that the last sponsorship slot was filled by Jeep the day before the final.
In terms of ticketing and attendance, this picture is not as rosy as Infantino would like, either. Only eight games out of the 48 group fixtures saw attendances above 90% of capacity, with the River Plate vs Urawa Red Diamonds and Ulsan vs Mamelodi Sundowns games selling less than 20% of available tickets. The game at Lumen Field between River Plate and Urawa sold just over 11,000 tickets in a 65,000-seat capacity venue, an appalling state of affairs for a tournament so hyped by Infantino.
In the knockout stages, three round of 16 games were at less than 50% capacity, with Internazionale vs Fluminense played in front of 20,030 people, less than 27% capacity of the Bank of America Stadium. From the quarter finals onwards, attendance certainly picked up, but this may be due to the 97% discount on tickets, which were originally priced at over $400 but were selling for around $10 in the run up to key quarter final and semi final matches.
Infantino is desperate for the Club World Cup to be a success, which he hopes will be his defining legacy as FIFA president, as opposed to his selling the World Cup to the highest bidder, which will see the 2034 tournament played in Saudi Arabia. Much like his predecessor Sepp Blatter, Infantino understands that holding onto power as FIFA president requires buy-in from all member nations, which is why the prize pot has been so generously shared around.
However, while he made efforts to ensure the likes of South American, Asian and African teams took home a handsome share of the pot, the fact is that the rich got richer, with teams backed by hedge funds and oil states taking home the bulk of the revenue. Only Fluminense troubled the established European order, with three of the final four teams coming from Europe, and only three of the final eight teams coming from outside Europe.
The likes of Jurgen Klopp and Javier Tebas were very clear in their criticism of the new Club World Cup, with LaLiga president Tebas very blunt in his opposition, saying: “My goal is to ensure there are no more Club World Cups.”
Meanwhile, Klopp, Red Bull’s head of global soccer, stated that the Club World Cup was the “worst idea ever invented.”
However, Infantino and FIFA have taken little to no notice of the criticism, with Arsene Wenger, FIFA’s chief of global football development, downplaying any issues with the conditions teams played in and painting a positive vision ahead of the World Cup in 2026, which will be played at a similar time of year, stating that even issues with pitches and playing surfaces were resolved “once we watered the grass” while players being forced into playing in temperatures above 35 degrees celsius only impacted sprinting, not distance and that players “had to be equipped to deal with it.”
FIFA is determined to press ahead with the tournament and park their tanks right on the lawn of UEFA, whose president, Aleksander Ceferin did not attend a single game, unlike heads of other regional organizations. This direct challenge to UEFA’s elite Champions League competition has not gone unnoticed in Nyon, and with their new partnership with Relevent beginning in 2027 with a view to monetizing the North American market, UEFA will be hoping they will present a formidable counter argument to the Club World Cup in the years ahead.
While UEFA managed to see off the proposed European Super League format, Infantino may have found a way of getting the teams onside with an exceedingly lucrative super league alternative, a global Club World Cup made in his image.
